ARTICLES ABOUT TRIAL DATE BY DATE - PAGE 2

With jury selection extending past last week, opening statements that had been scheduled for Monday in the death penalty trial of a prisoner charged with killing a correctional officer are expected to take place Wednesday. Lee Edward Stephens, 32, is one of two life-term prisoners accused of fatally stabbing David McGuinn in July 2006 as he walked on a skinny catwalk along cells at the Maryland House of Correction. The slaying was among the main reasons the prison, in Jessup, was closed.

Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia are asking for a postponement until spring in the trial for an Ellicott City teen charged with aiding a terrorist, citing complexities in a case filled with classified information, voluminous evidence and multiple defendants. Also, according to documents filed by the U.S. attorney's office for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, an alleged accomplice remains incarcerated in Ireland pending extradition. Prosecutors say he has neither retained an attorney nor had a single court appearance related to the case.

The Baltimore trial of brothers Avi and Eliyahu Werdesheim, who are charged with assault and false imprisonment — accused of beating a black teenager last year while members of a Jewish patrol group — has been postponed for a fifth time. The racially charged case, which has strained relations between some black and Jewish city residents, was set for trial Monday. But defense attorneys asked for an advance postponement last week, according to Mark Cheshire, a spokesman for the Baltimore state's attorney's office.

A Baltimore County basketball coach was charged over the weekend with sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy, police said Monday, but the coach's employer defended the man. Police have charged Tyrone Terry Jordan, 55, of the 3400-block of Oakfield Ave. in Gwynn Oak, with sexual abuse of a minor, a felony, and fourth-degree sex offense, a misdemeanor. A 14-year-old boy told police that Jordan, his basketball coach, had touched him inappropriately on Aug. 31 while he was at the Hoops Summer Camp, located in the 3700 block of Twin Lakes Court in Windsor Mill, at the Twin Lakes Racquet Club, according to Baltimore County police.

A federal judge on Friday reversed an earlier ruling and ordered a Baltimore police officer charged in a drug conspiracy case to be jailed until his trial, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office. No trial date has been set. Officer Daniel Redd, who has been imprisoned since his arrest last month, was granted a conditional release Thursday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephanie Gallagher, who ordered that he be discharged to his mother's house under electronic home monitoring.

Two campaign aides to Republican former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. pleaded not guilty Monday to charges that they violated election laws last fall by ordering Election Day robocalls to Democratic homes in predominantly African-American areas that suggested the vote was over. Monday's arraignment was the first appearance in Baltimore Circuit Court by Paul Schurick, a longtime Ehrlich aide, and Julius Henson, a consultant to Ehrlich's 2010 campaign. Henson and a consulting company employee also are accused in a multimillion-dollar civil complaint in federal court.

The trial date in a five-year-old civil lawsuit claiming bias against Maryland's historically black state colleges and universities has been postponed until December, so the parties can attempt to mediate the case. "The issues at stake in this case are of concern not just to the parties but to the entire community," U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake wrote in a memorandum opinion issued late last month. "Better results often can be obtained, and can be more quickly obtained, through mediation rather than through trial.

Anne Arundel County prosecutors will seek life in prison without parole for Perry Roark, a reputed founder and leader of the violent prison gang Dead Man Inc., who was recently charged with first-degree murder in the 1994 death of another prisoner. Roark, 42, a muscular man with a long ponytail, was notified Thursday in Anne Arundel County Circuit court during a hearing to set his trial date, of the possibility that he will never be freed. A trial was scheduled to start March 26, 2012, and is expected to take two weeks.

Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, the Baltimore actress who played a ruthless hitwoman on HBO's "The Wire," pleaded not guilty Tuesday morning to drug conspiracy charges and requested a trial by jury, tentatively set for Aug. 9. Pearson, who appeared in Baltimore Circuit Court dressed in an oversized black polo shirt and baggy jeans, declined to comment Tuesday, saying she would talk "as soon as the case is over with. " She's "letting the lawyers take care of the legal issues and she's doing what she needs to do professionally," her attorney, Benjamin Sutley, said after the arraignment.